Memorial to
be erected at site of Riga shootings witnessed by Colonel
Walter Bruns.

Latvian Jews, local
government spar over inscription on a Shoah memorial

By Adam B. Ellick

NEW
YORK, Nov. 20 (JTA) -- Latvian Jewish
leaders and officials in the capital of Riga are tangled in
a dispute over the inscription on a Holocaust
memorial.

The Latvian Jewish community plans to erect the memorial
at Rumbula, where the local Latvian Nazi police and
collaborators murdered some 30,000
Riga Jews in 1941. The monument is scheduled to be dedicated
at the end of the month.

The Jewish community insists that the inscription include
the fact that Latvian volunteers -- including the notorious
Arajs Kommando unit, which served as a Nazi death squad --
participated in the slaughter.

But a commission appointed by the Riga municipality to
coordinate the ceremony has refused to approve the proposed
inscription.

The conflict has led to a deadlock and the possibility of
postponing the dedication.

The Simon
Wiesenthal Center this week urged Latvian President
Vaira Vike Freiburga to use her influence to help resolve
the issue.

In a letter, Efraim Zuroff, director of the center's
Jerusalem office, asked the president to be historically
accurate and to note the truth clearly.

"Given the active participation
of the Arajs Kommando and other Latvian units in this
mass murder operation against the Jews of Riga, such an
omission practically borders on denial, and I therefore
call upon you to help influence the members of the
commission to change their decision and allow the truth
-- as bitter as it is -- to be told in an unequivocal
manner."

Since they gained independence in 1991, the Baltic states
of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia have been encouraged by
Western governments to confront their Holocaust
histories.

In Latvia and Lithuania, more than 94 percent of local
Jews were murdered at the hands of Nazis and local
collaborators.

Historians say the number would have been far lower had
ordinary citizens not participated in the killings.

In coming days, all three nations are expected to receive
invitations to join the NATO military alliance, which has
demanded that the three governments confront the Holocaust
in terms of restitution, education and
commemoration.